Searching for Android apps by permissions, features and intents [closed]

Question

Are there services out there that let the user search or browse an Android app market by specifying the app's permissions (e.g. android.permission.RECORD_AUDIO), features (e.g. android.hardware.microphone), launched or filtered intents (e.g. android.speech.action.RECOGNIZE_SPEECH)?

I am interested in locating 3rd party apps that could complement my app in the Android environment so that I could recommend such apps to my users, ideally programmatically. What I've used so far is Google Code Search queries such as http://www.google.com/codesearch?q=RECOGNIZE_SPEECH, but these cover only open source apps. Is there a better way?

Update: note that Google Code Search has meanwhile been shut down. Sad. It was a really useful service.

Answer 1

No you can't do this. The only way I see is to build your own crawler with http://code.google.com/p/android-market-api/

Answer 2

If you're interested, I've developed an app, StripSearch, to filter search listings by the permissions used. The app works by excluding results that don't meet the permission requirements specified by a given search filter (a filter can exclude, require, or ignore specific permissions). Several filters are included by default, but you can create your own as well.

Get StripSearch here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hasslefixes.stripsearch

If you want to see a demo explaining its usage, you can watch a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mynw3rbky5A

StripSearch is free, does not include ads or spyware, and only uses the following permissions:

• android.permission.INTERNET (obviously needed to search the store)
• com.google.android.providers.gsf.permission.READ_GSERVICES (needed to obtain the Google Play Android ID tied to your phone and account)

Giv it a try!